“Re-examine all you have been told… and dismiss whatever insults your soul”
Walt Whitman Leaves of Grass
How I Practice
I start from the premise that we all have an inner wisdom calling us to personal truth and congruence. I work at depth, using an integrative, embodied approach to help unlock this guiding energy and awaken its potential. This means that I bring together elements of different approaches to tailor our sessions to your unique needs while paying close attention to our relationship and the connection between mind and body.
Our Work Together
We will start by honouring where you are right now, creating a safe holding space where you can freely share your thoughts, feelings and emotions as they arise. We will explore how these express themselves in your body, and how they might play out in your relationships and your ways of being in the world. We will take time to get to know all the parts that make up who you are so that you can experience yourself more fully and begin to voice your truth in a more productive way, and we will work to identify how your current struggles might reflect past experiences.
Connecting Mind and Body
Understanding your past and the patterns that affect your life is an important step in the therapeutic journey, but healing and growth cannot be achieved through the mind alone. We must learn how to listen to the body’s intelligence, too. So part of our work will focus on tuning into what’s happening for you in the moment: what sensations, unspoken words, urges or impulses might be occurring in response to what is being shared. I will invite you to pause occasionally to notice what is going on for you inside, and together we will reflect on how it is to be in relation with each other, so that you can become more attuned to the ways in which you connect with others and respond physically and emotionally to the things you experience. This growing awareness allows for choice, and choice then provides the opportunity for change.
Getting Creative
If it feels right for you, our work might also involve exercises designed to engage the imagination and let the subconscious speak. This might include mindfulness, guided imagery, drawing, inspiration from the natural world or techniques such as chair work. Or we might just sit and talk and focus on being together, if that is what feels most comfortable for you. The choice will always be yours.
The Maps that Inform my Practice
My approach, though grounded in Psychosynthesis, is strongly influenced by attachment theory, gestalt, interpersonal neurobiology and existential therapy, and I regularly attend trainings and workshops in these and other modalities in order to enhance my practice .
So what does it all mean…
What is Psychosynthesis?
What does Attachment Theory teach us?
Why Gestalt?
How does Interpersonal Neurobiology inform the work?
Why is an Existential lens important?
